Bomb survivor slams SF mayor

Coleraine man David Gilmore, who was caught up in a IRA bomb in Railway Road in Coleraine in which 6 people were killed.PICTURE MARK JAMIESON.

Published:14:32Wednesday 08 June 2011

A former Coleraine councillor has launched a scathing attack on former IRA bomber Sean McGlinchey who has been elected mayor of Limavady.

David Gilmour, who now works as a researcher for DUP MLA George Robinson, was just ten when he was sitting in a car beside a car bomb planted in Coleraine’s Railway Road on June 12, 38 years ago.

The bomb was planted by Sinn Fein councillor Sean McGlinchey, brother of notorious IRA man Dominic McGlinchey. Mr McGlinchey served 18 years for his crime and was recently controversially elected mayor of Limavady.

Mr Gilmour said that making a “mass murderer Mayor of Limavady is one of the most deliberately provocative actions that Sinn Fein has carried out in the town.”

He told the Coleraine Times: “Not content with trying to remove every trace of Britishness from the area they are apparently determined to show how, politically, they are dedicated to the annihilation of everything Protestant and British from Limavady and indeed Northern Ireland.

“McGlinchey cold bloodedly murdered six pensioners in Coleraine in 1973 and now is trying to gloss over that fact by being elected, yet another attempt by Sinn Fein to rewrite their history.

“It does not wash with me; McGlinchey is still a mass murderer and always will be. I will be happy to remind him of

the fact if the opportunity arises.”

“I was only 10 and sitting in the car outside the dentists in Coleraine. On the other side of the road I saw a Ford Cortina. A car drove up between us and then everything went black.”

Six people were killed, all in their 60s, and 33 others were injured, he said.

“The car that drove up saved my life and ever since I felt I must have been saved for a reason. I got out of the car and had only a mark on my foot.”

Calling on Mr McGlincheyt to resign, Mr Gilmour went on: “Why do I feel this way? The answer is simple – I was in Railway Road in 1973 when McGlinchey’s bomb detonated and I saw the result. The sight of the carnage will never leave me.I am a survivor – I stress survivor not victim – of his murderous actions and his claims of regret do not impress me whatsoever.

“If anyone wishes to see why I do not believe his utterances regarding his ‘regret’ over the 1973 Coleraine bomb they should search Youtube for his name and then listen to how regretful he is in a lecture he gave in Rasharkin in 2009.

“Even on his elevation to Mayor I believe he proudly proclaimed his republican past. Not much sign of regret there.”

In his closing remarks to an IRA commemoration meeting in Rasharkin in 2009 on YouTube, Mr McGlinchey said: “I have no regrets – I have to say that there – no regrets, and I count myself lucky I made so many friends and friendships out of the whole thing and I am just glad I am alive and as of yet survived it...”

Mr McGlinchey said that he was not prepared to debate his 2009 comments.

“Those words should not be taken out of context of a long talk in which I was saying that violence and armed struggle were not the way forward,” he said.

“I gave press and radio interviews 13 years ago saying I could not and would not justify what I did [in planting the bomb] and I was saying this when nobody else was saying it.

“I don’t want to see any more Coleraines or Omaghs. Everyone has made mistakes. If I had known that civilians were going to be killed I would not have planted the bomb.”